


I Was The Match

by vials



Category: The Lessons
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, wow has anyone else even read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 01:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15132125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: You might die, he thought, with terrifying clarity, and then, you’re going to die anyway.Mark Winters has never had a good grasp on perspective, or self-preservation, or anything he should have a good grasp on, really.





	I Was The Match

Mark hadn’t meant to steal the car.

_Honest,_ he’d later said to the police. _Honest I didn’t. It just happened._

How it had _just happened_ he was never sure. One moment he was walking past it, and the next moment he was driving it. If he thought hard, he could remember a few key details. The car had been idling outside of a takeout store, and there had been a bit of a line backing up inside the building. Whoever owned it would be some time. 

_Terrible for the environment, really,_ Mark had thought, peering in through the window to see the key sitting neatly in the ignition, engine running, no one else in the vehicle. _Maybe he only ran in for a collection. Maybe it’s the delivery driver._ No matter who it was, it was still bad practise. No point leaving an engine running if nobody was using the car. All those exhaust fumes, just billowing up into the air like that. _Maybe I should reach in and turn the engine off,_ Mark had thought, and then somehow he had been behind the wheel, and the car had been moving, and even through the rush of adrenaline he had thought to himself _my God, they’re going to be pissed._

But the time for worrying about that was later. Right now he was going to have to make the most of what he had, and what he had was a lot. It would take a lot of convincing later on, breathalysers and everything, to satisfy the police that he hadn’t been drunk or high or both; his driving certainly suggested that was the case, but the truth was that it was neither inebriation nor inexperience that lead to Mark’s erratic progress through streets only just beginning to thin from the early evening rush. He blasted through red lights, sending cars skittering and horns blaring; he mounted pavements to get past people and sent pedestrians running for their lives; on at least one occasion he shunted a car out of his way, pushing it along for several hundred feet before finally veering off and putting his foot down again.

He had no idea where he was going to go, and it was only when he saw the flashing blue lights in his rear view mirror that he realised he didn’t have a plan of escape either. Had he expected to escape? He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. If he really grilled himself about it, he hadn’t exactly considered the fact he would be caught. Perhaps the joyride had gone on too long. Perhaps he had been careless. Perhaps he didn’t care. 

Mark turned for roads he knew. His only chance at putting any distance between himself and the police was if he knew the roads, so a few left turns and through another red light did it. There was a stroke of luck then; a stroke of luck so unbelievable that Mark was sure it must have been some kind of divine intervention. Careening up the road pushing seventy miles an hour in a thirty zone, the road was clear ahead of him. In the darkening sky he became aware of what, in his dazed state, he was momentarily convinced were red stars, winking at him back and forth. It was only when he was close enough that he could hear the alarm that he realised it was a railway crossing. The barriers were about to come down. They came down only on each oncoming lane at first, to allow any cars halfway across to get through if they were already on the rail. Mark saw his chance.

_You might die,_ he thought, with terrifying clarity, and then, _you’re going to die anyway._

He slammed the brakes, twisted the wheel. The car spun around, briefly too far, then Mark managed to regain control. He launched through the gap via the oncoming lane, bouncing wildly in his seat as the wheels navigated the uneven rails, and then with another twist of the wheel he was on the other side, the lowering barrier barely missing the back of the car.

On the other side of the track, which was already shaking with the force of the oncoming train, were the police cars. There was nothing they could do until the train had passed, and Mark sincerely hoped it was a big one. 

Somebody was laughing, and with a jolt Mark realised it was himself. He was howling; hunched over the wheel, knuckles white, laughing so hard he thought he might be sick. He found the accelerator again and shot down the street, through the middle of the traffic, the white lines in the road cutting a perfect centre down the middle of the car. People honked, flashed their lights; he could feel an ominous thud from the front passenger side wheel but he was beyond caring. He was elated, dizzy with the success of temporarily leaving the police behind, but he knew he would have to ditch. There was no other choice for it. 

“You better hurry,” he told himself, glancing at his reflection in the rear view mirror. He looked like a ghost in the dim light of the car; face pale, eyes hollows sunk in shadow. “You better hurry up and think of something, because they’re going to be on you. They’re not going to be happy with you.” He laughed again, but this time it sounded forced. 

_This is all her fault,_ he thought, quite suddenly, and his grip on the wheel tightened as he realised it was true. _If she hadn’t kicked you out of the house with nothing to do, if she didn’t want to spend the evening being a fucking slut, then you wouldn’t have had to do this. You could have been doing something else instead._

He hadn’t realised he had turned for home until the streets became more residential. He recognised them, vaguely: the wide streets, nicely paved, the lack of traffic at this time, the large houses, spread apart from one another as though frightened they would catch something if they got too close. Several of the houses had grand gates, most of them closed at this hour. Intercom systems blinked beside them; some of the fancier houses boasted an automatic gating system. Mark hated them all. Every gate, every house, everyone in them.

He screeched around the corner, much too fast; the passenger side wheels mounted the pavement and Mark bounced around in his seat, barely keeping a grip on the wheel. _Should have worn your seatbelt,_ he thought, and laughed again, because that was the least of his worries. Ahead the street curved again, more gently, and he wrenched the car back onto the road and felt that one, if not both, of the tires were flat. It was difficult to get past forty; in the rear view mirror he would see a trail of sparks behind him. 

His mother’s house was up ahead, and he could see it now. The gate was open on one side, and from the angle he could see the driveway. His mother was standing at the top of it, talking to _him_ – there was no way he was leaving this early, so Mark knew he had to be showing her something, bragging, that fucking car of his maybe, he was going to crash into the car. 

The idea formed and he was acting on it before he could process it. It was a solid plan, he thought, for the split second where it was a possibility: just drive through the gate and into it. The only problem was that Mark was by now barely even aware that he was driving, and the gate was half-closed and made the gap he had to get through narrow, and at least two of his tires were gone so steering was difficult, and he was going too fast to correct himself by the time he realised he had lined it up wrong.

Mark never understood the specifics of what happened next. The car clipped the closed gate, which was, unfortunately for Mark, secured to some depth in the ground by its locking mechanism. The passenger side of the car abruptly stopped; the rest of the car spun around, and Mark was vaguely aware of spinning, fast, and thinking _this is going to hurt,_ and then with an almighty _boom_ the car hit against one of the large trees lining the drive and for a moment there was nothing but ringing in his ears and the smell of oil and fuel and, dully, somewhere in the back of his mind, pain. 

After that, nothing. It could only have been minutes, logically speaking, but Mark wasn’t aware of them. The next thing he knew, somebody was screaming his name, and he returned to himself abruptly and with no small amount of annoyance. 

“What?” he snapped. “What do you fucking want?”

It was his mother, of course, leaning in as best as she could through the passenger side window, which was now half the size it had been. Mark shifted and glass rained down from his hair, his shoulders, his shirt. Isabelle sounded hysterical, and Mark couldn’t stand it.

“Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up, for God’s sake!” 

She was yelling in Italian; Mark was responding in English, and it went on in a similar fashion until Isabelle swapped to English again, calling over to someone Mark couldn’t see.

“We need to get him out! What if it starts on fire? Graham, what if it blows up?”

_Oh, Hell no,_ Mark thought, and shifted again. He pulled his knees up and miraculously his legs weren’t trapped; the impact had been to the side of the car and he was half pushed into the passenger seat but didn’t seem to be pinned. He pulled his feet up onto the seat and looked around for a gap big enough to crawl out of; in the background he could hear his mother’s hysterical ravings about the car exploding, and Graham saying something Mark didn’t care about – ambulance, or police, or— _wow, police, thanks jackass._

Mark twisted around, looking behind him, and then above him where – praise be – the sunroof had shattered, crushed narrower on the driver’s side but appearing large enough directly above him. All he had to do was stand on the seat and pull himself out, which was easy at first until he realised he couldn’t move his left arm at all. At the same time as he realised this he realised that something warm was running down his face; stupidly he had thought it was some fluids from the car dripping on him but now he realised it was already on him; as he moved his head it would drip in different directions, warm and thick. Mark pushed the thoughts away. There were more important things to do, but his arm just wouldn’t cooperate.

He managed to stand unsteadily on the seat, pushing his upper body through the hole. He used his right arm to steady himself and then lifted a leg up, standing on the headrest and pushing himself out to a sitting position. From his new vantage point he could see the state of the car, all crumpled metal and dripping fluids, the steady tick-hiss of what was left of the engine. 

“Fuck,” he said, and laughed again.

“Marco!” Isabelle gasped, stepping back up to the car again. “What are you doing? Don’t move!”

“I’m not staying in there,” Mark replied, swinging his legs out. “You might be happy to stand around yelling about how I might burn to death but I’m not going to sit there waiting for it to happen.”

“You’re _hurt,_ Marco!”

“Fuck off. I’m fine.”

He slid to the edge of the car and dropped down, stumbling heavily. His legs felt fine but the impact with the ground had sent a sickening pain through his left arm and his head; more of whatever it was ran down his face and got into his eyes, making them sting, and his lifted the arm that was still obeying him and wiped it aggressively away. 

His hand came off slick with blood. Mark stared at it for a long moment, not able to comprehend it. He looked at it for a long while and then reached up, touching at it again. More red, thick and warm. He pressed against his face, his hairline. There was loose skin there; something gaping open. Mark felt a rush of bile rise up his throat and, with difficulty, swallowed it down.

“Marco, please, please sit!” Isabelle was begging. “You’re hurt, baby. You need to sit down.”

“I’m fine,” he shot back, but it was with less conviction. His arm still throbbed, a deep pain broken only by intermittent sharp stabs, like everything inside the skin had been turned to broken glass. Vaguely Mark took it in. His arm was bent at an unnatural angle, blood seeping through his sleeve. 

“Marco, _please_ —”

Finally he seemed to shake himself out of it, the lightheadedness returning but out of anger this time, rather than pain. He pointed a finger at her and saw it was trembling; if he’d had the strength he was sure he would have punched her, or shaken her, or done something other than just point and scream.

“You did this! This is your fault! Why can’t you just give a shit about me for five fucking minutes?”

“Marco, listen to yourself! How could—?”

“All you want to do is just sit here and pretend I don’t exist and fuck and act like you have your life back! Why didn’t you just abort me if you’re just going to try and kill me like this?” 

Isabelle didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t think she could process it even if she tried. Graham stood a little off to the side, watching the exchange, wisely knowing to say nothing. 

“This wouldn’t have happened if you just _wanted me around!_ ” Mark spat. 

“ _What_ wouldn’t have happened?” Isabelle finally asked, recovering enough that she suddenly realised how off the situation was. “Whose car is this? Where did you get it from? Why did you drive it into the gate so fast?”

“ _I wasn’t aiming for the fucking gate!_ ” Mark screamed. “I was aiming at him!”

He meant his car, of course; Graham’s car, but that seemed by the by now, and anyway, it was much more satisfying to point at finger at a pale and suddenly furious Graham. 

“You were going to _run me over?_ ” he asked, and Mark didn’t correct him. “Isabelle, I warned you about that child—”

“He’s _sick,_ Graham, he doesn’t know what he’s saying—”

“Sick in the way school shooters are sick! Sick in the way that kids who murder their parents in their beds are sick! Sick in the way that if you keep letting him run loose he’s going to—”

“Stop saying that! He wouldn’t! He doesn’t know what he’s _saying_ , Graham, and you’re just making it worse!”

“Where did he get that car from, anyway? Did he steal it? Did you steal it?” He directed the question at Mark but didn’t wait for an answer. “I suppose that’s your problem solved. I suppose he can’t murder us from juvie—”

“He’s not going to _go_ to juvie, Graham, he’s going to go to the _hospital_ , and they’re going to _help him_ —”

Something was turning over in Mark’s brain. Slowly, sluggishly, brought on by the fact he thought he could hear sirens and somehow they had fused together with the words _steal_ and _juvie_ and _did you steal it?_ He had stolen it, and he sure as hell didn’t want to go to prison, and his blood was all over the car and they were going to know what he had done because that was forensics right there, that was how they did it, blood and hair and skin flakes and God knows what else and he could hardly scrub the car when it looked like that and now he could see the blue flashes too and he had to do something—

“ _Marco, what are you doing?_ ”

At some point he had pulled out his lighter, flicked it open and held up the flame. The air around him was thick with fumes; he could feel it at the back of his throat, its heavy smell making him sick. The flame was hypnotising; he held it out and someone behind him shouted, and then someone grabbed him and there was more screaming and some of it was his own because they had grabbed his injured arm and he was twisting, yelling, kicking out at them but they held on and pulled him back and suddenly Mark could see why. 

There was orange now, orange with the blue, and the car was covered in it. It seemed to glow, everything orange, and it was only when Mark realised he had pulled free and stumbled to the ground that he heard the crackling of flames, saw them reaching up into the tree and catching on its branches, and then the blue overwhelmed the orange and he closed his eyes against its brightness. 

_You’ve done it now,_ he thought to himself, as the pain wrapped around him again, trying to drag him down with it. _You’ve really done it now. Good luck yelling and threatening your way out of this one._

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Mark mumbled, his words slurring together, and he lay back and let the pain take him.


End file.
